PROCOR Pellet Hoppers from Rapido

I'll get to the pellet hoppers in a second, but first I like to point out that I've changed up the header photo for December to one of SWeep 7104 passing under the Gratiot Avenue overpass on the JSSX.

I've been wanting and hoping for years for someone to produce the 4-bay rib-sided plastic pellet covered hoppers that I see at the Sarnia yard so often.  Either the Pullman standard type or the Procor type would be fine with me.  Both kinds would be even better, but I'm not sure that would actually happen.  And to me, the differences appear to be very slight anyway.

This car has had the original PROCOR lettering blanked out and the reporting marks are re-lettered to ICRX

A little more weathering on this one

The PROCOR lettering has been blanked out separately on each panel on this car

But enough of the prototype pictures, all of which I took myself down at C-Yard here in Sarnia by the way.

Rapido has actually come out with really nice models of the Procor-built cars, and I ordered two from the Otter Valley Railway late last Wednesday afternoon.  They arrived at my door Friday.  I bet that if I'd ordered them a couple of hours earlier in the day, Otter Valley would have had them here on Thursday.

I would have liked to get three of them, but with the price point being what it is plus shipping plus HST taxes, I settled for just two. I ordered one with the blue lettering and one with black. Here they are just on the workbench.

Rapido provides spare roof hatches for each car. I guess in case I somehow lose them off the models. There's also an information/history sheet included with the models.  There's no air line piping running on the underside of the models, but that's okay with me because I'd probably accidentally break it off sometime anyway.

The model with the black lettering has two different styles of roof hatches.

Just the round hatches on the roof of this one with the blue lettering

Here they are being shoved into the MidWest Plastics spur on the layout.  I wouldn't normally put new freight cars out on the layout without at least painting the wheels on them, but I did it this time.  I have added the yellow reflective stripes and I sprayed Tamiya Clear Flat over the cars to take down some of that brand new model shine.

Any other weathering is going to have to wait. At 5280 cubic feet and over 62 feet long these make really nice models, and I'm happy to finally have them.